Senior Manager, Product Development - Beauty and Personal Care

We’re building a world of health around every individual — shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you’ll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger – helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Position Summary

If you're energized by the idea of building consumer products from the ground up and seeing your work come to life on shelves, this is where your passion meets purpose.  As a Product Development Manager, you will play a key role in supporting the growth of our Store Brands portfolio by developing and executing product development initiatives that align with the broader business’ strategic goals. This role serves as the strategic owner of each product’s full lifecycle — from shaping the initial roadmap, leading discovery and hands-on development, internal and external cross-functional coordination to ensure successful and timely launches, in-market performance management and optimization, and may include discontinuation management, ensuring every product delivers on customer needs and drives sustained category growth. You will manage a portfolio of hundreds of items across multiple categories and product type while reporting directly to the Lead Director of Product Development and managing a dedicated Assistant Product Development Manager.

The Product Development Manager collaborates cross-functionally and holds key accountability in the following areas:

• Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs: Partner with CVS teams to ensure product, formulation, and factory compliance with internal standards and external regulations.
• Packaging, Brand, Business, and Consumer Experience Teams: Engage with cross-functional teams throughout the product lifecycle to ensure success through the core tenets of merchandising – product, price, place and promotion.
• Supplier Management: Oversee vendor selection and relationship management, with strategic negotiations as a core responsibility.
• Inventory and Supply Chain: Serve as a primary liaison to maintain consistent product availability and resolve supply-related challenges.
• Category Management: Act as the principal partner in driving business performance and aligning product development with category strategies.

Primary Job Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategic Planning, Execution, Business Oversight

• Develops Store Brand product strategies to support overall Category and broader enterprise objectives through collaboration and alignment with Merchandising and other cross-functional partners.
• Collaborates on the creation and execution of category level CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) product roadmaps with direction from the Lead Director, balancing short term execution with long term strategies.
• Identifies business risks and opportunities, developing strategies to mitigate and capitalize on them, leveraging a deep understanding of their categories in terms of market and regulatory forces, the competitive retail landscape and evolving consumer trends.
• Assists in analyzing data and identifying root causes for current business performance vs. budgets as well as financial objectives and metrics.
• Supports the Lead Director in developing an effective communication strategy and materials for internal and external leaders of anticipated changes to current product lifecycle
• Facilitates the creation of leadership level materials with cross-functional partners for key touchpoints such as:
  • New Item Presentation/Review
  • Category Planogram Strategy Kickoffs
  • Leadership Planogram Reviews
  • Product Pipeline Review
  • Leadership Level Business Unit Review Meetings

Tactical Product Development & Execution

• Executes on tactical steps within project plans with minimal support. 
• Owns and drives of all elements of product development from ideation, concept, sourcing, selecting supplier partners, negotiating costs, launching, making improvements, and potentially sunsetting.
• Serves as the lead point of contact between vendors and internal teams (e.g., Category Management, packaging, quality, regulatory, inventory, sourcing, brand, marketing, store operations, logistics, store layout/design) to ensure success through alignment with internal processes and best practices.
• Partners with QA/Regulatory to understand compliance and internal requirements related to product, formulations and factory operations. Included but not limited to the resolutions of product testing deviations, factory audit observations, and compliance with CVS specific quality programs.
• Executes a prioritized product roadmap that successfully delivers the company’s and Store Brand’s ambitions and objectives.
• Drives follow-through on strategic initiatives and monitoring of key-performance-indicators.
• Acts as a Subject Matter Expert in the tactical requirements of Product Lifecycle Management.
• Build & foster the development of high-performing teams, primarily this role’s direct report.

Stakeholder Influence and Change Management

• Develops advanced, clear, and persuasive business cases to influence stakeholders, leveraging cross-functional team resources.
• Fully embraces organizational improvement initiatives, acting as a change agent within own team, peers and partners.
• Fosters deep collaboration through healthy, constructive and/or positive feedback on ideas and key initiatives.
• Resourceful, curious and adept in breaking through barriers rather than be impeded by them.
• Establishes and enforces policies and procedures that promote ethical behavior, compliance, and best practices.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Facilitating collaboration between different departments to promote a cohesive and integrated approach to achieving organizational goals.
• Ability to adapt to shifting priorities and engage cross-functional partners in re-prioritization
• Drives change-agility in self, team and network.

Required Qualifications

The successful candidate will have a strong work ethic, an entrepreneurial mindset, business savvy, curiosity and the ability to be highly productive in a dynamic, fast-paced, collaborative environment balancing multiple priorities.  Will accept education equivalent contributing to the years of professional experience detailed below:

• At least 3-5 years of retail and/or product development experience with a strong understanding of the retail model, Consumer Packaged Goods industry, merchandising principles and delivering to customer needs.
• 3+ years’ experience utilizing business analytics and core retail data platforms (market data, business case, P&L, etc.).
• At least 5-8 years retail category management, CPG product development, product lifecycle management, or product brand management experience.
• 3+ years effectively negotiating and managing supplier/costing relationships.
• Proven track record of successfully using communication tools, data, and business case frameworks to influence others with and without implicit authority.
• Excellent communicator, both verbal and written, up to the executive leadership level.
• Keen ability to distill complex ideas into simpler frameworks and illustrations.
• Ability to derive insights and develop structured hypotheses by leveraging sales and market information, trends, customer research, empirical data.
• A successful candidate will have strong attention to detail and must be able to manage multiple tasks and projects simultaneously, own deliverables end to end, prioritize workload effectively, and thrive in a dynamic environment.
• Ability to operate with little oversight required with high level of accuracy and high-quality deliverables by deadlines.
• Leverages a continual improvement mindset to create simplicity and improve the colleague and customer experience
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to build trust amongst colleagues as demonstrated by successful collaboration to achieve shared goals
• Regular and reliable attendance during normal working hours as established by the leader, currently 3 days/week in office
• Proficient to Advanced skillset in Microsoft Office Suite.
• Execute additional tasks as directed by supervisor or manager.
• Travel requirements – up to 10% travel expected.

Preferred Qualifications

• Related product segment experience (Beauty & Personal Care or Consumables)
• Experience with MS Co-Pilot or similar AI platforms
• Experience Managing P&L or other financial frameworks
• Previous experience managing a team or direct reports, ability to mentor subordinates

Education

Bachelor's degree required

Pay Range

The typical pay range for this role is:

This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls.  The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, educa